Science and Speech in Determining "Human" Kind

In the context of this topic - distinguishing the human "kind" - I think you're looking at it backwards.All speech is a response to stimuli. The question remains: Is there a fundamental difference between the way humans respond to stimuli and the way some animals respond to stimuli? If animals - and some people, e.g. children - respond in only a rote way, how is that a fundamental difference?

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Unfortunately, your ability to make up willy-nilly sentences doesn't seem to be matched by an ability to read language.I didn't say that language is "just" respose to stimuli. I even bolded the "all" for you to make it plainer.All speech is response to stimuli. In mature humans, there's more to it than that - it isn't "just" response to stimuli. But in immature humans and in some animals, the response to stimuli is all there is.What I asked you, and what I don't see you addressing, is: Where do you draw the line? When does response to stimuli become "true" speech in children. How would you tell the difference?If we did a Turing test, allowing you to communicate with somebody or something behind a screen, how would you tell if your counterpart was using "real" language or "just" responding to stimuli?How would you tell the difference between a computer and an educated human and an uneducated human and a developmentally-challenged human and a human child and a talking parrot. Please be specific. Tell us how.When you can do that (and keep the smarmy bullshit to yourself), you'll be one step on the way to understanding what "speech" is.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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The questions is: When precisely does a child's "non-speech" become speech. How do you distinguish? What is the moment when the sounds coming out of a child's mouth begin to be "speech"?(Isn't it ironic that your posts probably wouldn't pass the test for "speech"?)

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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You're misunderstanding (or avoiding) the question. I'm asking how you would literally make the distinction.I'm asking you to design an experiment. You're on one side of the curtain amd somebody (or something) is on the other side. What specific questions would you ask to determine what that enitity was. How, specifically, would you interpret the answers to determine if they were "true speech" or just "response to stimuli"?Assume that you can't identify the subject by way of accent, tone of voice, etc.How would you distinguish, by words alone, between human and animal? Between mature human and immature human? Between human and machine?Until you can demonstrate empirically how you would make the distinction, all you have is a schoolboy hypothesis.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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I'll remind you that you haven't told us yet what the test is.Please post a list of questions that you would ask an unseen subject in order to determine whether that subject was human or non-human. Tell us how you would interpret the various anticipated responses to distinguish speech from non-speech.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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When you explain to us, in detail, how you would distinguish between a speaker and a non-speaker - from communication alone, without foreknowledge if it was human or non-human.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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Dr. Pepperberg is reluctant to call Alex's vocalizations "language".Isn't the issue as much about the understanding of language as about the vocalization of language? He might not be able to speak complex sentences, but if he can understand complex sentences, isn't he using language?

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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That should be your first clue that you're not answering what's being asked. First, you seem to be under the impression that I'm disagreeing with you and therefore have to provide some "proof" that you're wrong. I'm just asking you to support your position. I haven't taken any particular position of my own.Second, it really isn't about grammar at all. It's about how to distinguish speech from non-speech. If you choose to use grammar as the be-all and end-all requirement for what makes speech, that's fine. But I'm looking for an empirical distinction, not a hypothetical one.As an exercise, how about coming up with a speech/non-speech test that doesn't rely on your favorite definition of grammar?

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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We're trying to determine a way to distinguish human "kind" from other animals. Are there not apes, etc. whose "mere understanding and response" is better than that of some humans? As long as there's overlap, it's not a difference of "kind" but of degree.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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No, I don't want a hypothetical. I want a specific test for speech (and note that RAZD has ruled that language != speech) that doesn't depend on a specific grammar. A grammar can be any set of rules that governs the meaning of groups of words. Alex's grammar doesn't have to be the same as your grammar, even if you're using the same words to describe the same concepts. The test you proposed smacks too much of a test for "proper" grammar.Edited by Ringo, : Corrected grammar.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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For example, in Message 161, you said:

quote:

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... I'd make sure that the meaning of what I was asking was dependent on the presence of grammar, unlike in the questions asked to the bird, where the meaning of 'green block' and 'block green' is the same, and is dependent only on rote memory of the words and their meanings and not dependent on their grammar.

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The only essential point of grammar is that "green" modifies "block". If Alex can distinguish objects by colour and a child can distinguish objects by colour, how do you distinguish Alex from the child?You also make a big issue of infixing words, as if anybody should be able to recognize a word by it's grammar. That would be an unfair test for many humans too.The challenge is to devise a test to distinguish humans from other animals. It can't be a test that humans like IamJoseph would fail.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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You're going at it backwards. If you want to make a distinction between the bird and a human (in terms of speech), you'd have to demonstrate that he doesn't know. You'd have to demonstrate that a human (i.e. all humans) can do something that no bird can do.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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The prosecution here is claiming that humans can be distinguished from other animals by speech. So prosecute. Present your evidence. Let's see you predict the specific results of your tests. Will an illiterate coal-miner be able to understand your grammatical distinctions? Will a two-year-old?For your test to be valid, it would have to produce the same results for all humans and for no other animals.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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